


Tres Caballeros

by NorroenDyrd



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Action/Adventure, Adventure, Boys Being Boys, Broody Fenris (Dragon Age), Cute Kids, F/M, Fenris in Dragon Age: Inquisition, Gen, Grumpy Fenris (Dragon Age), Implied Fenris/Hawke, Magic, Meddling Kids, Mentioned Zevran, Minor Fenris/Hawke, POV Child, Parent-Child Relationship, Rescue, Team Bonding, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-05 23:43:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6728113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regalo (a.k.a. Reg), the son of Warden Amell and Zevran, gets tired of waiting for his parents as they are off researching the cure for the Calling. He escapes the watchful eye of his babysitter Felsi and, together with her son, goes off to find his Mama and Papa. Their adventure having barely started, the boys already manage to get into trouble, but are rescued by a grumpy grown-up with weird glowy thingies drawn on his body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tres Caballeros

**Author's Note:**

> Reg still has some vaguely elvish features, which technically contradicts the lore. I am rather fond of his design, however, and ask the reader to forgive this minor transgression and imagine for a moment that Zevran's genes are too amazing to be completely recessive.

'Stop looking back, Nugget, you'll twist your neck!'  
  
Starting at the sound of his companion's loud, impatient voice, the chubby, red-haired boy swivelled his head and blinked rapidly a few times, his protruding ears swelling into two large, fleshy crimson dumplings.  
  
Judging by his looks, the startled, flushed little fellow was a young Dwarf. Although he was barely taller than a toddler, he did not falter or stagger as he walked down the narrow path through the tall grass (which almost reached as high as his head); and his features, though still childishly soft, suggested that he was at least eleven or twelve years old. In addition, he sported a pair of small, bristling ginger sideburns, which promised to one day grow into a glorious beard.  
  
'I was thinking about Mom,' he mumbled sheepishly, struggling to quicken his pace as much as his short legs could allow him. 'She'll be worried sick when she comes home and sees that we've sneaked off!'  
  
The other boy slowed down a little, allowing little Nugget to catch up. Almost twice as tall as his redheaded friend, he seemed to belong to the race of Men; that said, his tanned face was slightly more angular than an average human's, and when he flipped back his blonde hair, in what looked like a practiced movement (perhaps aimed to impress the onlookers), he exposed a pair of slightly pointed ears.  
  
'I left her a carta,' he said nonchalantly, leaning down to give Nugget a reassuring pat on the shoulder. 'It says that we are off on an epic quest and all that'.  
  
Nugget batted his eyelids in another series of rapid blinks.  
  
'You left her a bunch of Dwarf crooks?' he said slowly, knitting his tiny but bushy eyebrows together. 'You made my mom fight off bad Dwarves?!'  
  
He had started the sentence in a puzzled tone, but by the time he finished, his ears flared up even brighter than before, his hands clenched into tiny fists, and the wings of his bulbous little nose quivered like a young bull's.  
  
The taller boy backed away a couple of paces, his greenish-grey eyes widening.  
  
'Hey!' he cried out. 'Don't go all berserker on me! I - I meant a letter! I left her a letter! Andraste's bum, Nugget, where can I find bad Dwarves anyway?'  
  
The Dwarven child's onset of anger seemed to pass as quickly as it overcame him.  
  
'Oh,' he muttered, scratching the back of his head. 'You're doing that word thing again, right?'  
  
The other boy nodded.  
  
'Yeah, it kinda happens sometimes. My Papa always says that donde-ever you go, you can't get Antiva out of you'.  
  
'I wish I could go to Antiva,' Nugget sighed wistfully.   
  
'Well, maybe you're gonna go there,' the second boy reasoned with a very businesslike air, as he turned to face the road ahead, and began walking again. 'Who knows where my Mama and Papa went off to... Maybe they are doing that epic Crow-fighting thing they did before I was bornido. You'll like Antiva, I think. There's oranges and donkeys and sneaky fellows in cloaks and lots of other neat stuff...'  
  
'I wanna see the neat stuff!' Nugget exclaimed, doing a little dance on tiptoe in his eagerness. 'But first, we are gonna see my Dad, right?'   
  
'Claro,' his companion assured him. 'First, we go to Amara... Amarateen and ask your Dad what my Mama's  up to. Maybe we'll stay around to find some Darkspawn too!'  
  
'The Darkspawn are gone, though... Aren't they?' Nugget said breathlessly, while trotting in the taller boy's wake.  
  
'They are never gone for good,' his companion pointed out, deliberately making a point of sounding as sinister as possible. 'Nadie knows when they'll show up...'  
  
They spent a good share of the way talking about how a Darkspawn eats a person's face off, and which parts of it the creature finds the tastiest. Nugget made faint retching noises a few times, but was promptly chastised for not being a brave hero like his father; at which point the little Dwarf hurried to straighten himself up and puff out his chest, and firmly declared that if he were a Darkspawn, he'd go for the eyes, because they are white and round and kind of look like candy. The other boy reasoned that if eyes (or ojos, as he called them at first) were candy, they'd make your eyelids stick together. And, engaged in such scientific discourse, the two little adventurers made their way up a grass-covered rocky outcrop that overlooked a lush green valley.   
  
Of course, the last few yards uphill had to be turned into a race, under the strict rule that dictated, 'The last one up is a Brood Mother!'. Being more lightly built and having longer legs, the young Antivan would have bested his friend without much effort - but, glancing back over his shoulder just as he was about to reach the top of the cliff, he saw the Dwarf reeling and panting quite a long way behind him, and, nodding to himself decisively, took to running on one spot, kneading the air with his elbows, until Nugget trudged past him.  
  
Brood Mothers were most horrid bestias, after all - he still remembered how hearing about them for the first time had given him nightmares, and how Mama had thrown up her arms and yelled at Papa for scaring him (well, she hadn't actually yelled, because Mama never yelled, not even at Darkspawn - but that had definitely been the closest she ever came to yelling).  
  
The boys finished the race together, and as they stood on the cliff's edge, a gentle breeze playing in their hair, and gazed out towards the hazy blue chain of hills on the horizon, Nugget inhaled the fresh air deeply, and declared,  
  
'I am hungry!'  
  
The taller boy pressed his fingers against his stomach, which let out a melancholy growl, in complete agreement with Nugget.  
  
Deciding not to waste time on packing (lest Nugget's mother came home from her errand too early and caught them in the middle of their preparations), they  had not taken anything with them, save for a handful of silvers from their nuggie banks. But what good was lunch money if there was nobody around to buy lunch from?  
  
'Yo tambien,' the little Antivan said, casting a dreamy look on a puffy cloud overhead, which, as luck would have it, had decided to shape itself into a most scrumptious pie.  
  
'So, uh, what do we eat?' Nugget asked, also noticing the cloud and giving it a very glaring stink-eye: by now, the ethereal pie had transformed into a succulent nug kebab.   
  
Outraged at such mean teasing (no wonder some Dwarves hated the sky so much!), the child looked down at the valley instead, gasping a little at the sheer height of the cliff where he and his friend stood. Then, when the initial dizziness ebbed away a little, Nugget narrowed his eyes, peering at the tiny cluster of what looked like houses on the river bank.  
  
'Hey Reg!' he addressed his companion, pointing downward. 'This looks like a farm or something! We could ask for food there!'  
  
The Antivan flashed a broad grin at him.  
  
'Let's go then!' he declared gleefully. 'Oh, they'll make a gran feast for us - we'll tell them we are on Warden business importante! Vamonos, Nugget! There may be pancakes!'  
  
With this reassuring motto (he had to remember it and share it with Tío Alistair if they ever met again), Reg turned on his heels - and opened his mouth in a flabbergasted gaping grimace. Looming over him, having seemingly emerged out of nowhere, were two very menacing-looking grown-ups. They were clad in bizarre, ornate robes with enormous triangular hoods that obscured their faces, and one of them carried a large, tattered book under him arm.  
  
'Hola,' the boy said to them, with a weak wave of his hand and a small, nervous laugh.  
  
The grown-ups, however, did not appear too eager to start a friendly conversation. The hooded figure on the left - the one with the bulky tome - turned its head, ever so slightly, towards the one on the right, as though asking what had to be done with the two boys. And although this was not much of a gesture in itself, the grown-up had somehow managed to turn it into something so sinister that Nugget gulped and said out of the corner of his mouth, tugging at Reg's shirt,  
  
'We should probably run!'  
  
In the meanwhile, the bookless figure let out an exasperated sort of grunt, and said, in a deep, and not the least bit creepy, voice,  
  
'Not this again? What use could these waifs possibly be to the Elder One? They would probably die after the first dosage!'  
  
'We could at least try and see what happens!' the book-holder argued. He spoke with a familiar Fereldan accent - but that did not make his voice any less creepy than the other grown-up's. 'The things your order does with Red Lyrium - they are fascinating! I want to take every opportunity to contribute to the cause! Do you not seek out... unconventional mages like me with just that purpose? To help you with your... research?'  
  
Even though the meaning of the robed grown-ups' little exchange was lost on the boys completely, the word 'research' was enough to signal trouble. Upon hearing it, Reg immediately ceased gaping at the two creepy figures and, grabbing Nugget by the hand, darted off along the cliff side, with a triumphant yell,  
  
'No researcheréis us, you big dumb hoods!’   
  
It seemed like he and Nugget were off to a good start - but this was no playful 'Last one is Brood Mother' race. Those robed creeps proved hard to outrun, no matter how hard Reg strained his muscles, and no matter which sweating knots Nugget twisted himself into in order to keep up.   
  
Well, actually, if they had played fair, they would probably have tripped over their own robes after the first few seconds of the race. But they did not play fair.  
  
As the boys dashed away from the grown-ups, the Fereldan made a curious little flick with his wrist, and his huge book soared into the air in front of him, falling open at a page that was covered in twisting, spiky blue symbols. The hooded man passed his finger over the rustling parchment, and at his command, four large, jagged ice spikes burst out from underneath the ground's surface, encasing the children in a glowing cage, with barely enough space to move or breathe.  
  
Half in panic and half in anger, Nugget hammered frantically at the solid wall of ice before him; but the magical barrier did not yield to his little fists, and the only thing he managed to do was to turn his knuckles all sticky and gooey with blood. Reg glanced down at his friend's hands in alarm and pity, and muttered fiercely to himself,  
  
'Andraste's piernas pelosas! Why  can't I be a mage like Mama?!'  
  
Somewhere beyond their magical prison, the deeper-voiced grown-up said, sounding quite impatient,  
  
'Well, you have trapped the urchins - what now? You'll have to immobilize them once the snow melts'.  
  
'I think I will use chain lightning to paralyze them,' the Fereldan mused. His voice was accompanied by a loud humming noise, which did not bode well. 'The fat one will need an extra blast, though... He looks like a Dwarf, and the blighters are resistant to magic'.  
  
Nugget started, obviously not appreciating either being called fat or having an extra blast of nastiness in store for him. Reg, his face ghastly pale in the light of the ice magic, laid his hand on his tiny friend's shoulder and said resolutely,  
  
'You heard the bad guy. You've got a better chance of not getting hurt than me. Try to make a run for it. Tell todos back at home that I died a hero'.  
  
'You read too many fancy books,' Nugget replied, rolling up his eyes. The grimace that he made looked more than a little silly, and, quite in spite of himself, Reg snorted loudly through his nose. Seeing that, Nugget giggled as well; and soon enough, the two boys, still squished together between slippery, slowly thawing slabs of enchanted ice, began to gasp with laughter, while the hooded grown-ups waited for a chance to zap them with bad magic. Not the wisest thing to do - but if they survived this, they would still have to wait for years and years before they became wise.  
  
Perhaps they would have kept laughing until their cage melted away completely - but after a few moments, they fell silent, startled by a sudden, overwhelming explosion of noises beyond the icy walls. First, there came footsteps; then, an incoherent questioning exclamation; then, a slimy sort of squelch, like someone had dropped a very, very rotten tomato and it burst against the ground. The squelch was followed by a new exclamation - no, it was more of a cry, really, loud and rather... scared. The cry was accompanied by a brief sizzle (perhaps it was the blast intended for Nugget?), but they were both cut short by another squelch, this time even slimier.  
  
'What's going on out there?!' Reg breathed, shifting impatiently on one spot. 'Estamos missiendo everything!'  
  
With this indignant protest in mangled Antivan, the boy elbowed at the ice slab with all his might; and quite without warning, the thawing wall fell apart, finally setting the boys free.   
  
Squinting in the sunlight, Reg and Nugget stumbled forward; as they did so, their bleary eyes suddenly widened into enormous white orbs that would have tempted any face-chewing Darkspawn. Moments afterwards, forgetting their much-revered tenet that hugs were girly, they threw themselves into each other's arms (or rather, Nugget made a huge fretful leap and Reg caught him) and began to scream.  
  
The sight that they laid their popping eyes on was enough to unnerve anyone. The two robed strangers lay on their back, their arms thrown wide apart, and their chests turned into a gruesome, red, wet mess. Standing over them, his shoulders slightly slouched, was a tall, lean Elf with long white hair. His hands in spiky metal gloves were clasped tightly into fists, and were dripping with something dark-red - the same shade of red that was splattered all around the grass. Not the friendliest fellow in the world, obviously.  
  
The shrill sound of the boys' joint shriek of terror did not make the Elf any friendlier. The glare that he gave them, his teeth half-bared in a snarl, strongly hinted that they were going to be next to have their chests ripped out. So, when Reg finally ran out of breath and had to fall silent, he fully intended to grab Nugget and bolt with him for safety. But he had barely lifted one foot off the ground when the Elf suddenly spoke.  
  
'You are finished then? Does this mean you are ready for questions?'  
  
'What questions?' Reg asked, his voice quivering a little, while Nugget plopped down to the ground by his side, his round tummy rising and falling.  
  
'What do you know about these Venatori?' the Elf demanded, pointing down at the shredded grown-ups. 'They were not mere slavers, were they? What were their plans here in Ferelden? What were they intending to do with you?'  
  
When this torrent of questions ceased, Reg sniffed. Then blinked. Then sniffed again. The Elf looked confused for a moment or so; then, the crease between his eyebrows growing deeper, he moved a little to the side, shortening the distance between himself and the boys and at the same time allowing them to look at him without catching sight of the bodies.  
  
'Is that better?' he asked, his voice sounding slightly less harsh than before. 'I confess I do not know how to deal with... children. But I understand that seeing so much blood is not - '  
  
'You aren't going to kill us?' Nugget piped in squeakily. 'Are you... M-master Elf?'  
  
The Elf's mouth twitched at those words, and the swirly white markings that covered his neck and arms (fancy tattoos of some sort, maybe? Like those Reg's Papa had?) flashed a bright, piercing shade of blue.  
  
'Don't. Call. Me. That,' he said, clenching his jaw. 'Just... Answer my questions, and I will send you on your way back to your parents'.  
  
'Er... Please don't... Ser Elf!'  Reg said, slowly calming down. 'That is, don't send us back to Nugget's mama! She won't understand our epic quest!'  
  
The Elf grunted impatiently.  
  
'Epic quest? Ah, never mind! I don't have time for whichever game you are playing! Did you, or did you not, hear these two men discuss anything important?'  
  
'They... They talked about some stuff called Red Lyrium...' Nugget said slowly. 'They also called me fat; but I am not fat - I'm stocky! My mom says all Dwarves are stocky!'  
  
The Elf completely ignored this valuable insight and cast down his eyes, murmuring thoughtfully,  
  
'Red Lyrium... So our paths might cross, after all... She told me to stay away; she told me my markings might be affected... But how can I - '  
  
Reg cocked his head to the side like a curious fledgling bird, and asked,  
  
'Ser Elf... Are you in love with someone?  Because my Papa looks just like that what he talks about my Mama, and he says he is very much in love with her! I think that's pretty gross, but I forgive him, because he is my Papa!'  
  
The Elf looked up at the boy, his eyes rounding almost as much as Reg and Nugget's had when they saw his... handiwork.  
  
'That is neither here nor there,' he said at length, fingering the frayed sliver of red cloth that was wrapped around his wrist. 'Now, I shall thank you for what you told me, and be on my way. You have given me a lot to think about'.  
  
'Thanks for not killing us,' Nugget said, trying very hard to smile and bow like a polite little Dwarf. 'Oh, and do you have food? We are... kind of hungry'.

**Author's Note:**

> As a bilingual child, Reg sometimes comes up with mashed-up speech contructs that borrow some traits from King's Tongue (English) and Antivan (Spanish).
> 
> And speaking of languages - I had to make one of the 'creepy guys' a Fereldan (possibly a maleficar joining forces with the Venatori?), because otherwise the two mages would have talked to each other in Tevene, and the kids wouldn't have understood them.


End file.
